* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR NOVEMBER 2014: US President Barack Obama arrived in
Beijing on 9 November for the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) summit,
being genially hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although the US and
China have their big differences, the APEC summit was marked by an
extraordinary agreement, announced on 12 November, that America and China
would work together to stop growth of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030.

The accord was something of a surprise, but possibly shouldn't have been.
Chinese leadership is under very strong public pressure to deal with air
pollution and other environmental problems; the environment is a more
obviously pressing issue for Xi than it is for Obama. The agreement focuses
on long-term efforts, but at least it gives a roadmap; and isn't binding, but
then few international agreements actually are. It raises hopes for a useful
global climate deal in Paris at the end of 2015. It certainly gives a bit of
hope when the political prospects for action on climate change seem to be on
the fade, even as those who deny there's a problem are increasingly exiled
to the hysterical fringe.

In a press conference, Obama called the accord an "historic agreement" and a
"major milestone in the US-China relationship." The emphasis at the summit
was for the US and China to focus on what they could work together on, with
the summit also resulting in an accord on tariffs, and a military arrangement
to reduce the chance for clashes in the South China Sea. There was, of
course, no sign that problem was close to being resolved. Beijing is also
touchy about foreign approval of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong,
with a tendency to believe the Americans are covertly aiding or even
instigating them.

According to Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan
think tank in Washington DC: "Counter to the heated rhetoric over the last
few years, US-China relations show more signs of cooperation than
confrontation right now. The key question is: does this adjustment reflect
a change in foreign policy in the longer run?"

* As discussed by TIME magazine online, while Russia continues to hold the
upper hand in Ukraine, its economy continues to deteriorate -- and not just
because of sanctions, though they have had their effects. The ruble has
fallen to new lows on international currency markets, while economic growth
is slowing to a halt. Falling oil prices have inflicted great pain on both
Russia's economy and the government, while Putin's attempts to strike back at
sanctions have, to a degree, backfired; blocks on the import of foreign
foodstuffs have made food scarcer and more expensive for Russian citizens.

The plundering of the Russian economy to enrich the political leadership has
also taken its toll. Russia's economy is becoming ever more hollow, with no
prospect of the trend being reversed. Putin believes he can stay the course,
and is reaching out to China and other Asian economies to restore growth
without having to kowtow to the West. He also knows that a collapse of
Russia's economy will cause pain in Europe and elsewhere; he tries to exploit
such fears to take the edge off sanctions.

However, Putin has no way of evading the hostility of Western governments
over Russian imperialism; the G20 summit took place in Brisbane in November,
with Putin leaving early in the face of criticisms. Denunciations by Obama
could have been easily expected, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to a
degree reluctant to take a hard line against Russia in the past, made it
clear that German positivism about Russia was at an end. At a speech in
Sydney following the summit, Merkel commented: "After the horror of the two
World Wars and the end of the Cold War, [Russian misconduct] calls into
question the peaceful order in Europe."

Putin must have been particularly taken back when Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper told him: "I guess I'll shake your hand, but I have only one
thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine."

That, at least, grants some relief from the realization that Putin is no
Stalin -- who would have gone back home and conducted a purge in response.
Indeed, so far Putin remains popular among Russians, in part because he's
been skillful in shifting the blame for Russia's problems from himself onto
sanctions and other foreign meddling. How long that will last is unclear.

* THE ECONOMIST ran a survey on gay rights, focusing on gay marriage,
beginning with a bit of deserved pride in the magazine's cover story in
January 1996, titled: "Let Them Wed" -- with two men on the wedding cake
holding hands. The letters department was flooded with hate mail.

Now gay marriage is legal in 19 countries, and increasingly tolerated in
others. On 6 October, the US Supreme Court refused to hear appeals against
lower court rulings overriding state laws blocking gay marriage; if that
wasn't a blanket declaration of the legality of the notion for the entire
USA, it had aspects of one. The only question about the fall of such
obstacles as persist in the states is not IF, but WHEN.

Here's the puzzling part: why such a rapid flipflop? The state of
Massachusetts pioneered the legalization of gay marriage in 2004, the
immediate result being dozens of US states passing laws to block it. Barack
Obama opposed gay marriage during his 2008 presidential campaign. He
renounced his opposition in 2012, with three states approving gay marriage in
that year; when the Supreme Court ordered the Federal government to approve
such marriages in 2013, it opened the floodgates.

By that time, polls showed about 60% of Americans had no problem with
same-sex relationships. Gay rights followed in the tracks of racial equality
and feminism. A new generation arose that was comfortable with the idea,
while the old generation began to fade away. However, the change in attitude
was so rapid that generational change couldn't be the full answer; it simply
became obvious to more and more people of the injustice of their position,
its inconsistency with principles of tolerance and the rights of citizens.
Indeed, on reflection the bigotry now increasingly seems black comedy. Gay
marriage granted a public stamp of respectability on gay relationships, not
merely removing the stigma on gays, but also giving reassurance to the
straights. This is not to say the war is over; merely to say that it is
now obvious which side is going to prevail.

At least, likely to prevail in developed countries. Gay sex is illegal in 37
out of Africa's 54 countries. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has called gays
"vermin", and has promised to stamp them out like malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
The hatred of gays is obviously sincere and resonates with the general
public; but bashing gays certainly works well for political grandstanding, to
distract the public from corruption or other problems.

Uganda has now passed a severe anti-gay law. As it was originally introduced
in the country's parliament, it was much more severe, incorporating the death
penalty. It was toned down in the face of international outrage, Obama
taking diplomatic measures against Uganda in protest. Ugandan President
Yoweri Museveni expressed resentment at the pressure, accusing outsiders of
21st-century colonialism, imposing their values on Uganda. Ironically, such
modern laws have similarities to those passed by 19th-century colonial
imperialists.

Vladimir Putin -- like Museveni, effectively president for life -- sees gay
rights as Western subversion of traditional Russian values, and has pushed
through tough laws against gays. However, there are signs of thaws in China
and India, though nothing that resembles the wild rush that has taken place
in the West. The global winds do seem to be blowing against repression and
it appears on retreat, but is it headed for extinction? Certainly, it seems
hard to believe that bigotry will return in places where it has been put
down, and it is obvious that countries where it continues to prevail will
feel as much or more pressure over time. The instinct, correct or not, is to
believe that in the 22nd century, bigotry against gays will seem as bizarre
as the era of American racial segregation does today. We will have other
things to fuss about.

* WINGS & WEAPONS: An essay in AVIATION WEEK reported on a chat with Sir
George Zambellas, Britain's First Sea Lord and so boss of the Royal Navy
(RN), during the course of a visit by Zambellas to Washington DC late in
July. While American brass are disgusted with budget cutbacks, Zambellas was
upbeat, saying the RN "is seeing signs of expansion, which is a really weird
place to be." He pointed to:

Zambellas said that while the RN has suffered deep cuts, by the 2020s it will
be allocated over half of Britain's defense budget. Zambellas was careful
not to crow to the Americans, however, emphasizing cooperation over
competition. The UK is collaborating with the US on the "Common Missile
Compartment" for the next generation of SSBNs, and one of the new Type 45
anti-air warfare destroyers has been operating as an integral part of a US
Navy carrier task force. In addition, a type 45 has been involved in
collaborative exercises with the US Navy on ballistic missile defense.

Zambellas did have worries, however, over the 18 September referendum on
Scots independence, since the RN has critical assets in Scotland:

The SSBNs are based at Faslane, while their warheads are stowed in
nearby Coulport.

The two carriers are being built at Rosyth, which is the only place in the
UK with a drydock big enough for them.

The Royal Air Force, which is anticipating purchase of the US-made P-8
Poseidon to restore a maritime patrol capability, needs Lossiemouth in
northern Scotland, since losing it would increase the range of patrols to
protect the SSBNs and other RN assets by about 320 kilometers (200 miles).

While Zambellas was satisfied with current RN funding levels, he acknowledged
the service doesn't have much margin, and the loss of the Scots bases would
be painful. Fortunately, the result of the referendum was a clear NO, and
the Royal Navy could give a sigh of relief.

* The Chinese DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) was discussed
here
in 2013. As reported by JANE'S Online, a recent Pentagon report says that
the Iranians are now quietly fielding their own ASBM, the "Khalij Fars".
It's a version of the solid fuel, single stage Fateh-110 tactical ballistic
missile with an electro-optical (EO) seeker that enables it to home in on a
ship's infrared signature in its terminal attack phase.

Since Iran leverages heavily off Chinese weapon systems, it is plausible that
the EO seeker is derived from DF-21D technology. Iranian media has reported
that the missile has the same 300 kilometer (185 mile) range and 650 kilogram
(1,435 pound) warhead as the latest versions of the Fateh-110. That range
allows the missile to cover all maritime activity in the Persian Gulf and
Strait of Hormuz. According to the report: "Tehran is quietly fielding
increasingly lethal symmetric and asymmetric weapon systems, including more
advanced naval mines, small but capable submarines, coastal defense cruise
missile batteries, attack craft, and anti-ship ballistic missiles."

Although the Iranians lack over-the-horizon targeting capabilities needed to
make effective use of an ASBM, the report added: "Iran potentially could
alter the regional naval balance if it ever did reach such a level of
sophistication in guidance, range, reliability, and operational accuracy."

* The "Bluetooth Low Energy" short-range communications / location scheme for
smartphones, known as "iBeacon" in its Apple implementation, was discussed
here
late last year. AVIATION WEEK magazine reports that American Airlines is now
performing a trial at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in Texas on what Bluetooth LE
can do for airline passengers. The system will be able to locate passengers
and give them alerts that they need to get to their boarding gate, providing
directions and an estimate of how long it will take to get there. The system
can also report if a passenger has boarded or is near the gate, allowing
service staff to hold the gate open if possible. Other airlines are
similarly interested in BlueTooth LE.

* COSMIC GOLD: As reported by an article from TIME Online ("Gold In
Space" by Michael D. Lemonick, 18 July 2013), once upon a time, following the
creation of the Universe in the Big Bang, there was nothing but hydrogen and
traces of helium. The gases then condensed into stars, with the stars then
accumulating heavier elements in their cores -- layers of successively
heavier elements, in fact, the number of layers depending on the size of the
star. The biggest stars will build up a core of iron, but once the fusion
reactions that produce the iron can no longer be sustained, that's the end of
the matter.

Up to iron, the synthesis of elements releases energy, it's an "exothermic"
process; above iron, it absorbs it, it's an "endothermic" process. The
result is that the fusion engine in the stellar core goes out. With no
fusion reactions to push back against the tendency of the star to collapse in
on itself, the star does so, and brews up as a supernova. All the heavy
elements that compose the Earth and our bodies were cooked in the cores of
stars -- except those heavier than iron, such as lead, platinum, or gold.

There was long a vague notion that heavy elements would be synthesized in the
shockwave of the violent supernova explosion, but the idea had never been
nailed down very well, and so the result was dueling theories, none of them
well-based on solid data. Now a team of Harvard astronomers believes there
is evidence the heavy elements were produced in the collisions of neutron
stars -- superdense stellar remnants composed mostly, of course, of neutrons.

They took their cue from US National Aeronautics & Space Administration's
Swift satellite, launched in 2004 to help clear up the mystery of the "gamma
ray bursts (GRB)" that occur briefly in the distant cosmos. The problem with
figuring out GRBs is their brevity, none lasting more than a few minutes,
meaning that it was hard to spot and inspect them. Swift was built to
"swiftly" locate a GRB and then alert a network of astronomical observatories
to zero in on it.

In June 2012, Swift spotted a GRB, with astronomers quickly examining the
event with the twin Chile-based Magellan telescopes. They caught a glow of
visible light, which allowed them to estimate the distance of the event at
3.9 billion light-years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope checked the location
of the event a week later; it was no longer visible, but there was still
infrared emission.

Edo Berger, lead of the Harvard research team, said the observations could be
explained by the collision of two neutron stars, and the creation of heavy
elements in the event: "It's catastrophic and it happens very fast. Plus
theorists think neutrons are crucial to the formation of these heavy
elements, and neutron stars have plenty of neutrons."

One particular point in favor of the neutron-star production model is that
the event takes place in a very small volume of space, which would help
promote the endothermic fusion reactions needed to generate the heavier
elements. The supernova model doesn't provide the same level of
localization. In any case, the afterglow of the GRB could be could be
explained by the production of atoms totaling more than 3,000 times the mass
of the Earth -- some being radioactive and causing the glow -- including the
heavier elements, with enough gold to form several bodies as big as the
Earth's moon. Berger also thinks statistics argue in favor of the
neutron-star model: "The rate of collisions in the Milky Way is one every
100,000 years, on average, and that's just enough to explain the abundance of
gold in our galaxy."

The word "abundance" in this context is misleading, of course; even several
Moons worth of gold doesn't amount to much on the galactic scale. It is the
73rd most common element on Earth; all the gold humans have ever dug up would
only amount to a cube about 20 meters (65 feet) on a side.

* In somewhat related science news, as also reported by TIME Online, back in
2007 astronomers detected a burst of cosmic radio noise, lasting maybe a
second or so. Was it a local event? The burst showed evidence that it had
been spread out by the thin vapor of electrons in deep space, hinting that it
came from outside the Milky Way -- which meant it had to be extremely
energetic to be detected at all. However, given a single event, there wasn't
much more to be said about it. A second, similar blast detected in 2011
didn't help clear things up, since its dispersal was less suggestive than
that of the first.

Things are looking up a bit. As per a recent paper in AAAS SCIENCE, using
the giant Parkes radio telescope in Australia, astronomers have observed four
more of these mysterious bursts. Given that they only observed a small part
of the sky, they estimate that about 10,000 such bursts should be occurring
across the cosmos every day. All four bursts demonstrated dispersal,
suggesting an extragalactic origin; indeed, they appear to be originating
from five to ten billion light-years away, far across the known Universe.

The next trick is to cue infrared, optical, and high-energy telescopes to
inspect a burst when it happens. According to lead author Dan Thornton of
the University of Manchester in the UK: "It's still a mystery what [the
bursts] are. But at least it's not a mystery that they exist."

* CUI BONO? An article from WIRED Online "This Man's Simple System Could
Transform American Medicine" by Sarah Fallon, 14 October 2014) discussed an
exercise in probabilistic reasoning -- revealing, as might be expected, how
commonly we misunderstand probability, most visibly when it comes to health
matters.

The item in question is the "number needed to treat (NNT)". It's simple:
the NNT is just the average number of people given a treatment for one of
them to benefit from it. For example, if a child is throwing up, she might
be given a drug named Zofran, which has an NNT of 5, meaning that it works
for one in five patients. The NNT has a complement, the "number needed to
harm (NNH)", which gives the average number of people given a treatment for
one to suffer bad side effects. Zofran doesn't even have an NNH, since it
has no known bad side effects.

Now, for an alternate example, suppose a doctor recommends that a healthy
older person take an aspirin a day to ward off a heart attack. In that case
the NNT is 2,000 -- down in the statistical noise. The NNH is over 3,300, so
at least the aspirin is well more likely to do good than harm, if one wants
to bother.

The NNT was first described in a 1988 paper published in the NEW ENGLAND
JOURNAL OF MEDICINE by epidemiologists Andreas Laupacis, David Sackett, and
Robin Roberts titled "An Assessment of Clinically Useful Measures of the
Consequences of Treatment". Their starting point was what is known as
"relative risk reduction", or the percentage improvement in patient health
due to a treatment. If, for example, patient fatality rate for an affliction
is halved by a particular treatment, then its relative risk reduction is an
impressive 50%.

The difficulty is that if the improvement is from one fatality out of twenty
patients (5%), to one fatality out of forty patients (2.5%) -- well, that's
definitely all for good, but not as impressive as 50%. The authors suggested
that "absolute risk reduction" -- in this example the 2.5% reduction in
fatalities -- would be more accurate. It would, however, not be so easy to
interpret, so they suggested that the reciprocal of the absolute risk
reduction -- in this example, 1 / 0.025 = 40 -- would be easier to
understand.

This value was what they called the NNT. Would 40 be a "good" NNT? If there
were no evident side effects and the treatment inexpensive, YES; if there
were nasty side effects and the treatment expensive, NO. When the anti-HIV
drug AZT was introduced in the early days of the AIDS pandemic, it had nasty
side effects and was expensive, but it had an NNT of 6, which was very good
even considering the drawbacks. Improved anti-HIV drugs have been introduced
since then that have an even better NNT and aren't as bad in their
side-effects, though they remain spendy.

Few patients have heard of the NNT; more surprisingly, doctors aren't all
that aware of it either. To spread the word and make better use of the NNT
David Newman -- director of clinical research at Icahn School of Medicine at
Mount Sinai hospital, who practiced medicine in military service in Iraq --
set up a website named "TheNNT.com" -- with dozens of contributors inspecting
available studies to crunch the numbers and post the results. Given that
there's a trade-off between the NNT and the NNH, the site places its
evaluations in four categories:

_____________________________________________
GREEN: does more good than harm
YELLOW: uncertain if it does good or harm
RED: does no good
BLACK: warning, does more harm than good
_____________________________________________

Newman is a proponent of evidence-based medicine, believing along with others
of the same mindset that medicine has yet to become truly scientific, saying:
"People tend to think that if it's a medical intervention, there's science
behind it." This isn't always true, Newman adding: "It is a lie to tell
patients to do something without telling them: You should know we've done
lots of research on this, and we can't find any benefit to it."

The difficulty is that doctors have an inclination to prescribe treatments
even when it's not certain they do any good -- because such treatments might
do some good and they feel compelled to do something, in particular because
patients demand that they do something. The doctors also don't want to be
seen as negligent. According to a survey, more than 90% of doctors say such
"defensive medicine" is common in their community. A study shows that in
2011, Americans spent $210 billion USD, 8.4% of health care spending, on
useless treatments. Useless treatments can not only be ineffective, they can
degrade the quality of life of patients.

Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, which focuses on overtreatment
in US health care, is enthusiastic about the NNT and Newman's website, saying
Newman is "tackling something fundamental about how we think about health
care and behavior and risk. All of us have trouble clearly distinguishing
degrees of risk, and that is compounded by the enormous noise that
accompanies health information."

It will take a change in mindset, both of patients and doctors, to accept
such risk estimates; many patients are outraged at the prospect of any risk,
even though they can't avoid some risk, with doctors pressured to humor them.
The patients end up paying, so why not? How much the NNT can help with the
problem is uncertain -- but it certainly can't hurt.

* ARIZONA ROAD TRIP (18): Family business sent me on a return trip to
Spokane in early June, and I conducted my usual summer trip there in August.
There wasn't too much to say about either trip, though a few interesting
things came up.

On the June trip, other than that instead of staying at a Hilton Garden Inn
or Hampton Inn as is my usual custom, I tried the "C'Mon Inn" motels in
Missoula, Montana, on the way out, and in Casper, Wyoming, on the way back.
They looked a little like ski resort hotels and the rates were good, so I
figured I should give them a try. As it turned out, they were clean and
comfortable and the price was fair -- but they weren't my style. They
had stuffed animal displays in dioramas ringed by hot-tubs, giving me the
impression of staying in a giant sporting-goods chain store. It just seemed
a bit quirky, even depressing. I tend to find stuffed animals grotesque; a
good or even mediocre statue works much better for me.

I did have fun talking with the desk clerk at the C'Mon Inn in Casper, a
young fellow who had just come in from Seattle. He was surprised to find out
I was familiar with Seattle, and knew what a nightmare it was to drive around
in that city. This trip I also had my car digital music player -- discussed
elsewhere, enough to say it worked very well -- and was more careful about
checking tire pressures. The little ASUS notebook worked very well, much
more useful to me than the tablet. I'm thinking of getting an Acer Switch to
try tablets again on more satisfactory terms, but no hurry.

* Having learned my lesson, on the August trip I stayed in the Hampton Inn in
Missoula and Hilton Garden Inn in Casper, as was my usual custom. I did
take my brother Terry's family out to dinner at a popular semi-fancy pizzeria
in Spokane, the Flying Goat, converted from an old service station, which
went well -- the food was innovative and good, the prices were not that far
above Pizza Hut. It seemed big on fancy brews; beer is of no interest to me,
but it seems like Spokane is noted for its micro-breweries.

I also had a little adventure on the way back that enlivened a trip that,
having been taken about fifty times, tends to the dull. While driving east
across southern Montana, I saw a train idled, possibly waiting for the track
to clear. It had unfinished Boeing 737 fuselages on it, something I often
see on that trip, being transported to the Boeing plant in the Seattle area
for final assembly. This seemed like a great opportunity to get some
pictures of them, so I pulled over and stopped.

It turned out to be even more interesting than I thought, since the train was
also loaded up with military four-wheel MRAPs -- armored cars. They weren't
marked with the name of the service they were going to and they didn't have
the hard-to-hide grunge of gear that's seen field use; I presume they were
being sent from the manufacturer, Oshkosh, to a military base, or possibly
for shipment to a foreign customer.

I noticed somebody in a Suzuki SUV had pulled off the road in front of me,
presumably to take pictures as well. Having got my shots, I got back on the
freeway; some time later I pulled over again to get shots of some spectacular
lavender-colored fields. The Suzuki then pulled over again in front of me.
The driver got out and accosted me; I was suspicious at first, but then he
identified himself as a storm chaser and a pilot, and wondered if I had got
shots of the 737 fuselages. The train had taken off before he could get them
himself.

A fellow geek! I was pleased to talk to him. I asked him if he had a flash
drive, and then I took my little ASUS notebook, copied the shots into it, and
then copied them back out to his flash drive. We then went our separate
ways. Anyway, between April and August I drove the equivalent of a trip to
Australia. I'm not going to be so enthusiastic about trips in 2015; which is
just as well, because due to cash-flow issues, I won't have the money for
them for a few more years anyway. [END OF SERIES]

* THE COLD WAR (46): President Eisenhower's attitude to the Bomb was
profoundly ambivalent. He rejected the notion of a limited nuclear war; it
wasn't that he failed to appreciate the attractiveness of the nuclear option
for the battlefield, he was just knowledgeable enough of history and strategy
to realize that there was no reason to think it a workable option. If one
side went nuclear, the other would have an irresistible inclination to
retaliate in kind, indeed escalate rather than be trumped by the other side.
The fact that the end result would obviously be disaster wouldn't stop the
escalation.

The ironic consequence of this vision was that Eisenhower focused on the
nuclear option. Eisenhower coupled a slowdown in buildup of conventional
forces with acceleration of acquisition of nuclear weapons, a policy named
"New Look". The nuclear buildup was focused on fighting a total, apocalyptic
nuclear war. Since such a war could not be rationally fought, American
policy would walk the fine line between deterring the Soviets and threatening
them. That would be very difficult to do, since the Soviets were inclined to
feel threatened, desperate to prevent the Americans from getting the decisive
nuclear edge. Both sides built up their arsenals of nuclear weapons and
delivery systems.

Eisenhower's cuts to conventional forces raised loud protests from the joint
chiefs of staff, who lobbied friends in Congress to push their agendas.
Eisenhower tried to explain the economic necessity of defense cuts to the
chiefs and told them they needed to toe the line, but they continued their
lobbying efforts. Eisenhower was not at all surprised, no one having better
knowledge of the games the military brass like to play; he was particular
exasperated at the way each of the chiefs would agree with him that cuts to
other services were perfectly sensible -- but that the funding for the
chief's own service was completely inadequate.

Democrats in Congress were sniping at the administration for its perceived
weakness on defense and failure to stand up to the Reds. The Republicans
having used the "soft on Communism" card against the Truman Administration
and Democrats in general, inevitably the result was a contest between the two
parties for which would be seen as tougher -- both quick to pounce on any
perceived sign of weakness in Eisenhower's defense policy. The Cold War was
driven at least as much by domestic politics as it was by international
tensions.

The one-upmanship was ironical, given that the rapid buildup of the American
nuclear arsenal was headed into the absurd. In fact, Eisenhower wanted to
spend less on nuclear weapons, and was interested in diplomatic means of
slowing down the nuclear arms race. In July 1953, Robert Oppenheimer had
published an article in the FOREIGN AFFAIRS journal titled "Atomic Weapons
And American Policy" that made a strong impression on the president. In the
article, the physicist pointed out the folly of an unrestrained nuclear arms
race, noting that America's "twenty-thousandth bomb ... will not offset their
two-thousandth." A few hundred nuclear weapons would be enough to inflict a
crippling level of damage on the combatants. Oppenheimer called for "candor"
by the government relative to America's nuclear arsenal and defense posture.

While Eisenhower was receptive to Oppenheimer's call for candor and
disarmament, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Admiral Lewis Strauss,
the new chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, were not. Dulles believed
that the Soviets only understood overwhelming force, and would interpret
American restraint as a sign of weakness. Eisenhower had appointed Strauss
to the top job at the AEC in July, telling him privately to pursue
disarmament options; Strauss did nothing of the sort. He had already crossed
swords with Oppenheimer, who was an advisor to the AEC, over the development
of the hydrogen bomb, which Oppenheimer had strongly resisted.

Unfortunately, Oppenheimer's influence was then being undercut by a scandal,
the physicist having been accused of being a Red spy. There had been such
accusations against Oppenheimer for years, but McCarthy had got wind of the
issue, and the administration had to act before McCarthy did. On 3 December,
Eisenhower ordered an investigation to get the facts behind the accusations,
with Oppenheimer's security clearance frozen. The investigation blocked
McCarthy from taking action himself, since he would be an interference in due
process. Oppenheimer, under pressure to resign, refused and demanded a
hearing. [TO BE CONTINUED]

-- 07 OCT 14 / HIMAWARI 8 -- A Japanese H-2A booster was launched from
Tanegashima at 0516 GMT (local time - 9) to put the "Himawari 8"
geostationary weather satellite into orbit. The satellite was built by
Mitsubishi Electric, with assistance from Boeing. It had a launch mass of
3,490 kilograms (7,700 pounds), a design life of 15 years, and three
payloads:

Himawari 8 was placed in the geostationary slot at 140 degrees east
longitude. This was the 25th flight of the H-2A.

-- 15 OCT 14 / IRNSS 1C -- An Indian ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
was launched from Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal at 2002 GMT (local time -
5:30) to put the third "Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS)"
spacecraft into orbit. The space platform had a launch mass of 1,425
kilograms (3,140 pounds) and a design lifetime of ten years; it was placed in
the geostationary orbit at 83 degrees east longitude.

-- 16 OCT 14 / INTELSAT DLA 1, ARSAT 1 -- An Ariane 5 ECA booster was
launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 2144 GMT (local time + 3) to put the
Intelsat "DirecTV Latin America (DLA) 1" AKA "Intelsat 30" and "Arsat 1"
geostationary comsats into orbit. Intelsat DLA 1 was built by Space Systems
Loral; it had a launch mass of 6,320 kilograms (13,935 pounds), 72 Ku-band /
10 C-band transponders, and a design life of 15 years. It was placed in the
geostationary slot at 95 degrees west longitude to broadcast direct-to-home
television services to Latin America, in a partnership between Intelsat and
DirecTV.

Arsat 1 was first large communications satellite to be built in Argentina.
It had a launch mass of 2,980 kilograms (6,576 pounds), a payload of
24 Ku-band transponders, and a design life of 15 years. It was placed
in the geostationary slot at 72 degrees west longitude to provide
communications services to services across Argentina, Chile, Uruguay
and Paraguay.

-- 20 OCT 14 / YAOGAN 22 -- A Chinese Long March 4C booster was launched
from Taiyuan at 0631 GMT (local time - 8) to put the "Yaogan 22" satellite
into orbit. It was described as an Earth observation satellite, but was
apparently an optical surveillance satellite.

-- 21 OCT 14 / EXPRESS AM6 -- A International Launch Services Proton M
Breeze M booster was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 1509 GMT (local
time - 6) to put the "Express AM6" geostationary communications satellite
into orbit for the Russian Satellite Communications Company. The spacecraft
was built ISS Reshetnev of Russia, and was based on the firm's Express 2000
satellite bus. Express AM6 had a launch mass of 3,400 kilograms (7,600
pounds), a payload of 72 Ku / Ka / C / L band transponders, electric
thrusters, and a design lifetime of 15 years.

Express AM6 was to be placed in the geostationary slot at 53 degrees east
longitude to communications services to government and commercial users
across Russia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. However, there was an
upper stage fault, and it was placed in a lower than planned orbit; it used
its electric thrusters to slowly bring itself up to its operational orbit.

-- 23 OCT 14] CN XC / CHANG'E 5 T1 -- A Chinese Long March 3C booster was
launched from Xichang at 1800 GMT (next day local time - 8) to put the
"Chang'e 5 T1" lunar probe into space. The probe performed a loop around the
Moon, with a re-entry capsule being returned to Earth on 31 October as a test
for the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission, planned for 2017. The capsule
did a "skip" re-entry to null out its high return velocity, and parachuted to
ground in Inner Mongolia.

The upper stage of the Long March booster, which also looped around the Moon,
carried a 14 kilogram (31 pound) amateur radio payload from Luxembourg Space
named "4M-LXS" -- "4M" meaning the "Manfred Memorial Moon Mission", dedicated
to LuxSpace founder, Professor Manfred Fuchs, who died early in 2014. It was
a technology demonstrator, transmitting back to Earth its status and
measurements from a space radiation sensor.

-- 28 OCT 14 / CYGNUS 3 (ORB-3) (FAILURE) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares
booster was launched from Wallops Island at 2222 GMT (local time + 4) to put
the fourth "Cygnus" supply capsule, named "Orb-3", into space on an
International Space Station support mission. The booster cleared the launch
tower, but suffered an anomaly and was commanded to self-destruct.

-- 29 OCT 14 / PROGRESS 57P (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched
from Baikonur at 0709 GMT (local time - 6) to put the "Progress 57P / M-25M"
tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station
(ISS) supply mission. The Progress performed a direct ascent trajectory and
docked with the ISS Pirs module six hours after launch. It was the 57th
Progress mission to the ISS.

-- 29 OCT 14 / GPS 2F-8 (USA 258) -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from
Cape Canaveral at 1721 GMT (local time + 4) to put the "GPS 2F-8" AKA "USA
258" AKA "Navstar 72" navigation satellite into orbit. It was the eighth
Block 2F spacecraft, with the Block 2F series featuring a new "safety of
life" signal for civilian air traffic control applications. The Atlas 5 was
in the "401" configuration, with a 4 meter (13.1 foot) diameter fairing, no
solid rocket boosters, and an upper stage with a single Centaur engine.

* MOLA MOLA: The science component of WIRED Online blogs likes to run an
item on absurd-looking organisms every now and then, and chose in one
installment to focus on the giant ocean sunfish. To be sure, nature cares
nothing for aesthetics and saying a certain fish looks silly is being
parochial -- possibly we look just as silly to them -- but it is certainly a
true statement that there aren't other animals that look much like the ocean
sunfish.

Reefs tend to be oases of marine life, an environment that provides shelter
and supports a diverse ecology. The open oceans are a harsher environment,
more barren, less spectacular in their diversity, and with no place to hide
from predators. One option for defense is just to be well bigger than
predators; the ocean sunfish is the biggest living bony fish, growing to over
3 meters (10 feet) long and weighing over 2,270 kilograms (5,000 pounds).

Size is not its only distinction, the ocean sunfish having a very different
configuration from that we normally associate with fish. Instead of a
streamlined shape, it is in the form of a vertical oval, with a tall fin top
and bottom, and a tailfin that amounts to a fringe alongside the rear of the
oval. Because of its configuration, it has been nicknamed the "headfish" or
the "swimming head", because it suggests a fish that's lost everything but
its head. The scientific name is Mola mola, which has a vaguely
Polynesian sound to it -- but "mola" is actually Latin for "millstone", a
reflection of the fish's shape.

The ocean sunfish looks like an awkward swimmer, but though it's hardly a
speed demon, it's very efficient. While most fish swish their tails back and
forth for propulsion, the ocean sunfish uses its lengthened dorsal and anal /
ventral fins for drive, the flattened body slicing through the water, the
tailfin acting as a rudder, with additional control from the pectoral fins on
the sides.

Their closest relatives among other fish are pufferfish and porcupine fish,
the ocean sunfish being described as a "pufferfish on steroids". Indeed,
ocean sunfish larva have spines, like pufferfish, to help them survive
predation until they get to be too big a mouthful for most predators. Given
the lack of cover in the open ocean, most will not survive to that size, and
so an ocean sunfish is wildly generous with eggs, one female releasing
literally hundreds of millions of them.

Getting big is problematic not merely because of predation, but because,
again, the open oceans are relatively barren. The primary food of the ocean
sunfish is the jellyfish, which is fairly common, but also doesn't have
much food value, meaning that an ocean sunfish has to eat a lot of jellyfish.
Since jellyfish tend to have nasty stingers, ocean sunfish have a very thick
skin, made up of tiny plates with spines -- as another indication of its
relation to pufferfish -- and covered by mucus. They've got thick, tough
lips and a similarly tough digestive tract.

The low quality of its diet is a big reason why the ocean sunfish is so
efficient in its energy use. It of course will complement its diet with
other creatures, such as small fish, squid, and various crustaceans. It can
dive deep in search of food, over 900 meters (3,000 feet), with large eyes to
help it see in the dark depths of the ocean. It will also come up to the
surface, where it turns on its side and floats in the sun -- which is why
it's called a "sunfish". The posture is an invitation to seagulls to come
down and feast on parasites; the shadow also attracts small fish that clean
the other side. Of course, sunning helps the sunfish maintain thermal
balance as well.

The only significant enemies of Mola mola, at least once it reaches full
scale, are humans. The ocean sunfish is eaten in some places in the Far
East, but its big problem is that it is very vulnerable to being caught in
drift nets -- which, fortunately, are gradually being banned. The ocean
sunfish is no real threat to humans, being very docile, though running into
one in a boat is big trouble, not merely because of the size but because of
the really tough, prickly skin. They are not often kept in aquariums because
they demand a large tank; being creatures of the open ocean, they don't have
much comprehension of obstacles, and lacking agility they tend to injure
themselves by banging on the walls of a tank. They have to be more or less
hand-fed using a pole, because they move so slowly that other fish in the
tank will gobble the food up first.

* S-97 RAIDER IS GO! As discussed by an article from AVIATION WEEK
("Rotary Redefined" by Graham Warwick, 6 October 2014), the Sikorsky company
has now rolled out its "S-97 Raider" compound helicopter demonstrator for the
US Army's Joint Multi-Role (JMR) rotorcraft program.

The S-97 follows in the tracks of earlier Sikorsky efforts, beginning with
the "XH-59A" experimental rotorcraft of the 1970s, which featured coaxial
rigid rotors driven by dual turboshaft engines through a common gearbox, with
twin small turbojets for forward propulsion. The coaxial rotor configuration
has a number of advantages, including being compact and also eliminating the
need for a tail rotor to cancel torque. It is particularly well-suited to
high-speed rotorcraft flight, since helicopter rotors suffer from an
asymmetric lift problem: the rotor is moving forward on one side of the
machine and backwards on the other, with the result that at high speeds the
machine tends to flip over. Using dual contra-rotating coaxial propellers
gets the problem under control.

The XH-59A achieved high performance, but it was noisy, shaky, a gas guzzler,
and hard to fly -- managing four engines being a particular trial. In 2008,
Sikorsky began test flights of the "X2" demonstrator, a coaxial-rotor
compound helicopter with a pusher prop, all powered by single LHTEC T800
turboshaft. It was a company-funded effort, with a pricetag of $50 million
USD. The X2, which had a gross weight of about 2,720 kilograms (6,000
pounds), incorporated "lessons learned" since the XH-59A program, such as
composite materials, active vibration control, and a fly-by-wire flight
control system. It had vibration levels comparable to a Sikorsky Black Hawk
helicopter, but was twice as fast -- reaching 460 KPH (290 MPH / 250 KT) in
flight tests in 2010.

The X2 was retired in 2011, having served its purpose, with Sikorsky then
focusing on the S-97. Two are to be built, one for trials, the other for
customer demonstrations, at a total cost to Sikorsky and suppliers of $200
million USD.

The S-97 is a sharklike machine, with coaxial rotors, a pusher prop, and an
inverted triple-fin tail; it is about twice as heavy as the X2. It is
powered by a General Electric YT706 turboshaft with 1,940 kW (2,600 SHP),
driving dual four-bladed rigid, hingeless rotors. The rotor assemblies are
of composite construction, with swept tips, and have a diameter of 10.4
meters (34 feet). The pusher tail prop has six blades, in three-blade
contraprop configuration, with a diameter of 2.1 meters (7 feet). The pusher
prop is reversible, and disabled via a clutch for hover or low-speed flight.
Cruise speed will be 405 KPH (250 MPH / 220 KT) with external stores, faster
without; the S-97 will also have a higher ceiling and better maneuverability
than a conventional rotorcraft. There is a fixed tailwheel on the center
tailfin, with single-wheel main gear retracting directly into the fuselage
behind the cockpit.

Design of the S-97 was greatly assisted by extensive use of simulation.
Sikorsky is also being aided by a tight-knit network of 53 suppliers. While
the Raider is a demonstrator and not intended for operational service, its
configuration is close to that of an operational machine, and is regarded as
the basis for one. Sikorsky imagery of an operational machine shows it to
have an undernose imaging / targeting turret, with stub wings for weapons
stores.

The S-97 is seen as a contender for the US Army Armed Aerial Scout program --
now on hold due to budget cuts, but which is expected to be revived in one
form or another. Sikorsky has estimated that an operational machine based on
the Raider will have a unit cost of $15 million USD, about 25% more than the
price of a comparable conventional rotorcraft, based on a 428-machine buy to
replace the Army's Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters. A Raider
derivative, with about three times the gross weight, is also seen as a
contender for the US military's Future Vertical Lift Medium rotorcraft, to
replace thousands of Black Hawks from 2035.

* ARIZONA ROAD TRIP (17): The next morning, Mother's Day, I went for a
short trip to Couer d'Alene, Idaho, to take a brief hike over a hilly park on
the lakefront -- trying to keep up with my sister-in-law Janet, who was
charging relentlessly forward. Next time, prepared, I give her a better run
for her money.

We then walked into downtown Couer d'Alene right next door. I could only
contrast the somewhat backwoodsy place it has been when were kids with the
tourist attraction it had become in the present day, full of trendy cafes and
artsy shops. The city had kitted up a park near the waterfront with a truly
impressive playground complex, one of the most elaborate I'd ever seen.

Back in Spokane, we got Mom over to Terry's house for an early dinner. They
got to talking about local issues, one that I took notice of was a trial of a
local plumber for homicide. He'd fired up his truck, then went into the
house to get something he'd forgotten; when he came back out, some local kid
had got in, and was driving off with the pickup. The plumber shot and killed
him. The plumber was acquitted.

Although I didn't know the specifics, I had to agree with the acquittal. The
plumber shouldn't have killed the kid, but the kid had done something
unbelievably reckless; he had created the situation without consideration of
the consequences, and if the plumber had taken the most drastic action, he
had been put in a situation where he was going to react. I less faulted him
for opening fire than for leaving his pickup running. I suspect I'm much
more paranoid of thieves than most folks. When I was a soldier, I got it
hammered into me that anything not nailed down disappears quickly; I would
never think to leave my car running unattended, even in my own driveway when
nobody seemed to be around.

In any case, I ate and had to run, making it to Missoula that evening, going
the rest of the way home on Monday. There was snow on the ground in southern
Wyoming, which made me nervous about a freeze in Loveland -- though I found I
could gauge my altitude by the amount of melting. I got back into Loveland
after nightfall. I doublechecked the weather and found that temperatures
were to go down to -5 C / 23 F, which would surely freeze up and crack my
vacuum breaker. I wrapped an old comforter around it and covered it with a
plastic trash bag; for insurance, I took an old desk lamp with an
incandescent bulb and shoved it inside; it wasn't very hot, but warm enough
to prevent a freeze-up.

That done, I unpacked the car. I was in an acid, dissatisfied mood; the trip
had met all expectations and had not been that difficult, but it didn't feel
like rewarding effort. I was so disgusted that I stayed up a bit when I was
really tired to order a cheap little ASUS touchscreen laptop -- 11.6-inch
display, $300 USD -- from Amazon.com. It was just something gratifying to
do; besides, there was a chance I'd have to go back to Spokane on family
business in the near future, and I wanted to make sure I was properly
equipped the next time.

Sigh, now I have eight computers around the house. I don't mind having
bought the tablet, it was interesting to play with. Now I'm using it as a
BOINC crowdsourced distributed computing node. I'd set up one of my netbooks
as a BOINC server, but running a computer full time is not good on a hard
disk, and I started getting intermittent failures. The tablet doesn't have a
hard disk, so it can operate indefinitely; I dust the house every Wednesday,
and check the tablet to see what it's been doing. As for the new laptop, it
arrived promptly; I loaded it up with the software and configurations I need,
and doped out Windows 8.1 better.

In any case, I went to bed and got a short night's sleep. When I went for a
walk in the morning I found puddles hadn't frozen over, so it hadn't got down
below freezing during the night. Coming home was still the right call, since
all the data I had told me I would be in trouble if I didn't, and besides
there was no reason spend any more time in apprehension on the road than I
had to. I was puzzled that the weather reports were so off, though later I
found on some weather sites asking for Loveland, Colorado, gave Loveland
Pass, up in the mountains. Oh well.

The feeling of dissatisfaction lingered while I tried to get everything tidy
at home. I realized I hadn't checked the tire pressures as I had planned,
and found to my distress that the front left tire was down to half-pressure.
Oh dear, I could have been in real trouble. I promptly went over to Walmart
and had it patched. Walmart's a good place for tire service; I've had tire
shops try to tell me a tire's totaled so they can sell me a new one, but
Walmart won't play such games. [TO BE CONTINUED]

* THE COLD WAR (45): President Eisenhower was very interested in covert
action, since it seemed to promise results on the cheap; the CIA -- under
Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles' brother -- grew significantly as a result.
In June 1953, Eisenhower approved NSC 158, which called for propaganda and
covert action to "nourish resistance to communist oppression throughout
satellite Europe, short of mass rebellion." In reality, the CIA and other US
agencies involved in that effort would never have much to show for it, other
than antagonizing the Soviets. The CIA did have its successes, however.

In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh pushed through the
nationalization of Iran's oil fields, which had been under the effective
control of Britain. The British embargoed Iran; the Americans were
unsympathetic to Britain at first, but political activity by Iranian
Communists, and increasingly dictatorial actions by Mosaddegh, allowed the
British to argue to the US that Iran was in danger of falling under Red
control. The CIA cooperated with Britain's MI6 intelligence service under
Operation AJAX to orchestrate, mostly by bribes to Iranian officers, a coup
d'etat in August 1953 that toppled Mosaddegh, with Iran's king -- Mohammed
Reza Shah Pahlavi -- returning from exile to become the effectively absolute
monarch of Iran. Mosaddegh ended up in house arrest to his death in 1967.

Eisenhower was kept briefed on AJAX by Allen Dulles, but made sure that no
paper trail was left to show his involvement, also being careful not to
discuss the matter with his cabinet or the NSC. The Shah would be a staunch
American ally from then on, though the Iranians would never forget the coup
against Mossadegh, and it would come back to haunt the US.

There was an extreme ambiguity to US covert actions during the Cold War.
Before World War II, other than meddling in small nations in the Caribbean
region, America had little inclination to use "black operations" to interfere
in the affairs of other states. The war meant, if not the end of traditional
American isolation, at least an end to its predominance. Given a more
interventionist mindset, if things were being done in some foreign state that
were contrary to perceived American interests, then actions taken to deal
with the problem could be overt, covert, or both.

There was no reason on the face of it to see any moral difference between
overt and covert actions; if America chose to intervene, international
support, or the lack thereof, for such actions, would be effectively the same
either way. Covert action was likely to be less expensive and less drastic
than overt actions; why use a sledgehammer when a more precise tool would do
the job, and possibly less painfully for all? The big problem was lack of
transparency. There was an inclination to hide such actions from Congress,
in particular from members of Congress of the opposition party. To be sure,
secret information had to be released to Congress with great care and there
was no need to get too specific, but something was wrong if Congress wasn't
told at all.

The dilemma over covert action would remain as long as America rejected
isolationism. It was impossible to credibly deny that the US government had
a right to covert action, and there were very strong pressures to make use of
it -- even, maybe particularly so, in cases where overt action couldn't be
justified. The only guideline the leadership could have in doing so was what
would be called the "daylight test": that is, whether the action could be
justified once it was made public. Public officials were certainly drifting
over the line when they made major decisions while covering their tracks in
the records. [TO BE CONTINUED]

* SCIENCE NOTES: According to a study released by the US Centers for
Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), a child born in the USA today will live
longer than at any other time in American history, with average life
expectancy for the US population being slightly under 79 years.

Life expectancy for people born in 2012 was a tenth of a year longer than in
2011; women can expect to live to a bit over 81 years, while men can expect
to live to over 76 years. The infant mortality rate decreased 1.5% in 2012
to a historic low of less than 600 infant deaths per 100,000 live births.
Mortality rates of eight of the ten leading causes of death in the USA fell
in 2012 from 2011, including death rates for heart disease, cancer, chronic
lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, influenza
and kidney disease. Suicide rates did see an increase.

* As reported by a note from TIME magazine ("Very Good & Very Bad News In The
Vaccine Wars" by Jeffrey Kluger, 16 October 2014), the CDC has also produced
a survey of vaccination coverage for more than 4.25 million kindergartners
and the opt-out rates for more than 3.9 million in the 2013:2014 school year.

The survey covered three major vaccines, finding the national vaccination
compliance rates to be 93.3% for the chicken pox vaccine; 94.7% for the
measles, mumps, & rubella / MMR vaccine; and 95% for the diphtheria, tetanus,
& pertussis vaccines. These sound like good scores, but vaccination rates
need to reach or exceed 95%, depending on the disease, to maintain herd
immunity -- the protection afforded by vaccinated people to those who can't
be vaccinated, such as immunocompromised children, or those whose vaccines
didn't "take" well enough. Below such rates, infectious diseases can still
propagate through the "holes" in the population to strike the vulnerable.

Vaccination refusal tends to be associated with wealthier, better educated,
Left-of-center parts of the USA, such as the Northeast, the Pacific coast,
and pockets around major universities. That's part of the reason New York
City's elite private schools have vaccination rates far lower than the city's
public schools, and why some schools in the wealthier neighborhoods of Los
Angeles have a lower vaccination rate than South Sudan.

According to the CDC survey, there are the 26 states plus the District of
Columbia that don't meet the US Department of Health and Human Services'
guidelines of 95% coverage for the MMR vaccine. There are the 37 states that
don't even meet the CDC's standards for gathering data on vaccination rates
in the first place; and there are the 11 states with opt-out rates of 4% or
higher.

In California, 17,253 sets of parents have obtained waivers on vaccinating
their children, while 3,097 have done so in Colorado. This gives Colorado
the highest proportion of "refuseniks" relative to population of all the 50
states. In contrast, Mississippi had an overall kindergartner vaccination
rate 99.7% -- with Louisiana, Texas, and Utah not far behind.

ED: Politically challenging the right to waiver vaccines is very
troublesome, but now there's increasing thought to the idea of pressing
liability lawsuits on parents who waiver vaccines for their kids -- and those
kids then infect other kids with a disease. There's a precedent, with people
who knowingly passed on sexually-transmitted diseases now doing time in
lockup. Resorting to lawsuits is a drastic measure, but in this case it
sounds like such an effective one, it's surprising it hasn't been done yet.

* As discussed by a note from WIRED Online, there's nothing new about
tracking animals by radio collars -- but traditionally, the size of the radio
gear meant the animals had to be large, such as wolves or moose. Now
lightweight tracking tags, weighing a fraction of a gram, are being developed
that will allow tracking animals down into the size range of butterflies.

Such tags are necessarily limited on power, however, and so suffer from short
range. United Airlines is stepping up to get the scheme to work, by putting
receiver systems on their airliners to pick up the tag signals. With 5,000
flights a day, United will be able to provide almost global tracking on a
real-time basis. There being no reason that the lightweight tags can't be
used on bigger animals, tagging will become more widespread in general --
and since the system will be automated, researchers will not have to do any
more than log onto their computers to get tracking data.

* SPARKED: As discussed by an article from BBC WORLD Online ("Warning
Over Electrical Brain Stimulation" by Melissa Hogenboom, 23 August 2014),
although electric shock machines are now seen as part of the kit of quack
doctors of a previous generation, it does seem that electric shocks can have
beneficial effects. Take, for example, "transcranial direct current
stimulation (TDCS)" in which electrodes connected to the scalp provide gentle
currents that stimulate the nerve cells in the brain. Advocates say it
allows users to think faster and focuses their attention. It's non-invasive,
and very mild; it has been shown to improve math aptitude, with the effects
lingering for months. The US military uses TDCS to try to improve the
performance of its drone pilots.

Dr. Roy Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford in the UK is investigating
TDCS, trying to see how it affects cognitive functions. He says: "Research
has shown that by delivering electricity to the right part of the brain, we
can change the threshold of neurons that transmit information in our brain,
and by doing that we can improve cognitive abilities in different types of
psychological functions."

TDCS has attracted the attention of firms selling gadgets such as headsets
for gamers, telling buyers they will be able to "overclock their brain!"
Those who are performing valid research on TDCS find such claims overblown
and disturbing. In Cohen Kadosh's lab, electrical stimulation is used in a
controlled environment for no more than 20 minutes at a time, and only on
subjects who have passed thorough medical checks.

The problem is that indiscriminate stimulation may actually be harmful.
Different brain regions than those intended might be affected and, if the
stimulation is not carefully applied, it could actually impair brain function
instead of improve it. Cohen Kadosh says: "You can use stimulation that
might not be beneficial for you; you need to know how long to stimulate; at
what time to stimulate; and what intensity to use."

Hobbyist users of TDCS discussing the technology in online forums have
reported difficulties such as scalp burns, or increased levels of anger.
Nick Davis of Swansea University in the UK has pleaded for "calm and caution"
for the use of TDCS devices with developing brains, known hazards being
seizures and mood changes. Davis says that the human brain continues to
develop until the age of 20, and that electrical stimulation of a youngster's
brain has a more powerful effect than it does on an adult.

As Davis observes, online sales of "do-it-yourself" TDCS gadgets easily "puts
the technology in the realms of clever teenagers ... These are the people who
are probably going to do it at a higher dosage than a scientist or clinician
would give to a patient and are less aware of the potential risks."

A research team from the Oxford Martin School at Oxford has published a paper
that calls for regulation of commercially available TDCS devices. The paper
references a gamer's TDCS headset, with the manual providing a list of
unsettling warnings: those under 18 shouldn't use the device, nor should
those with epilepsy or other health conditions, and users should watch out
for for side-effects such as white flashes, nausea, headache, fatigue,
tingling, and redness.

Hannah Maslen, lead author of the paper, says that since the headset is only
marketed to gamers and makes no treatment claims, it evades the need for
regulation: "If you were to make a treatment claim, that the device would
alleviate symptoms or treat a recognized disease or illness, the device would
automatically fall under the medical devices directive and the legislation
associated with that."

The Oxford Martin team wants vendors to make sure they provide all the
information users need to assess the risks of the technology. Steven
Novella, a neurologist at Yale University in the US, believes that may
be too permissive, seeing TDCS as over-hyped, with the marketing being "a
couple of steps ahead of the science." Suggestions of increased attention
and the alleviation of certain medical conditions means interest in
electrical stimulation is bound to increase -- but as more attention is given
to TDCS, more work will need to be done to characterize the risks.

* APPLY MORE MOTORS: The E-volo VC-200 helicopter, an electric
rotorcraft flown by a total of 18 motors, was discussed
here
at the beginning of 2014. While the notion of a flying machine powered by a
swarm of electric motors may seem strange, as reported by an article from
AVIATION WEEK ("Electrifying Aviation" by Graham Warwick, 7 July 2014), the
US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) is taking it very
seriously, exploring the concept in the agency's "Transformative Aeronautics
Concepts (TAC)" program.

Over the next five years, NASA plans to develop technology for compact, high
power density electric motors operating at power levels of one to two
megawatts. These motors could power an all-electric general aviation
aircraft or helicopter; a hybrid turbine-electric regional airliner; or a
large cargolifter, all with many small engines distributed around the
airframe so as to make flight safer and more energy-efficient.

Mark Moore, an advanced concepts engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center
in Virginia, asks: "What problems are we trying to solve in general
aviation?" He ticks them off: low efficiency; poor safety, emissions, and
ride quality; and high operating costs. He sees distributed electric
propulsion (DEP) as offering improvements in efficiency, as well as noise and
energy costs, in a wide range of flight applications.

Purely electric propulsion is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable
future, constrained by cost and weight of battery packs, weight being a
particular problem for flying machines. Hybrid propulsion, however, is
attractive, since it is possible to build an efficient generation system,
and the efficiency of good electric motors is high. They also have excellent
power-to-weight ratios; they are quiet, reliable, and in themselves have no
emissions; they scale up or down easily. According to Alex Stoll, chief
designer of Joby Aviation, which is working on air vehicles with DEP:

BEGIN QUOTE:

You can have multiple small electric motors with the same output as a large
one without much penalty. You can put them anywhere around the aircraft,
versus heavy piston engines that can only go in one or two places. You can
use them to make a personal air vehicle practical, versus an expensive,
noisy, unsafe helicopter.

END QUOTE

To test out DEP concepts, NASA is teaming with Joby and Empirical Systems
Aerospace (ESAero) to investigate a "Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller
Technology (LEAPTech)" flight demonstrator. While a traditional light
aircraft requires a large wing to ensure a low stall and landing speed, that
big wing is inefficient in cruise, and tends to provide a bumpy ride at low
altitude, being sensitive to gusts. The LEAPTech demonstrator will have a
wing with a third that area, cutting cruise drag almost in half and resulting
in a much smoother ride.

The LEAPTech demonstrator will still need a stall limit of 113 KPH (70 MPH /
61 KT); it will achieve it by having little propellers along the full span of
the wing. The propellers will ensure good airflow over the wing even at low
flight speeds. All of the propellers, except for those at the wingtips, will
operate at relatively low RPM to reduce noise; each will turn at a slightly
different speed to distribute the noise spectrum. At cruise speed, the
low-speed propellers will fold back, with cruise maintained by the wingtip
high-speed propellers.

The LEAPTech demonstrator is based on an Italian Technam P2006T light twin.
The DEP wing will first be "flown" on the "Hybrid-Electric Integrated Systems
Testbed (HEIST)", which is rig mounted on a truck that will ground-test a
full-scale wing at stall speeds and above, that approach being cheaper than
wind tunnel tests. The rig will be mounted on an airbag system to isolate it
from vibrations that could interfere with the tests, with other sources of
noise to be eliminated in post-processing.

HEIST will operate at 100 to 120 volts, though a production flight system is
envisioned as operating at 600 volts. The wing will have 18 motors that will
operate at a total power of 225 kW (300 HP). Other studies will examine
power distribution schemes, use of variable motor power for flight control,
and potential flight hazards. It is not clear if the Technam LEAPTech
aircraft will actually be flown, or if it's just a straw configuration used
as a test target.

NASA Langley is also investigating a DEP "tilt-wing" vertical takeoff &
landing (VTOL) drone, this machine being designated the "Greased Lightning
GL-10"; Joby is also investigating a VTOL machine, named the "Lotus". Both
are being implemented as hybrid flight models with a weight of about 25
kilograms (55 pounds). Both investigations are being performed for an
undisclosed government organization.

The GL-10 has a slightly swept tilting wing with eight motors, along with a
twin-fin tilting tail with two motors. The large number of motors will
ensure controllability no matter what the angle of the flight surfaces is.
The Joby Lotus, in contrast, looks a bit like a sailplane, with a motor on
the tail and motors on each wingtip. The tail rotor is tilted to the
vertical for takeoff and landing, to be set to the horizontal to provide
thrust in forward flight. The wingtip rotors fold in forward flight, to
provide wingtip extensions.

According to NASA, these demonstrators will be faster and more efficient than
existing helicopter drones, providing more endurance without demanding more
efficient power sources. If the demonstrators prove all that's expected of
them, they may lead to operational drones -- and provide a basis for use of
the same technology in piloted flying machines.

* ARIZONA ROAD TRIP (16): I hit the road from Ellensburg on Saturday, 10
May, going over Snoqualmie Pass into Seattle. Since I had time to kill, I
decided to perform planespotting at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, online comments
saying there was a little park with a water tower off the runway where the
spotting was good. I got a little mixed up and didn't find the water tower,
ending up in a semi-secluded spot surrounded by a tangle of blackberry bushes
that I'd used before.

It was something of a bust, air traffic being light and uninteresting; the
only thing I spotted really worth shooting was a towhee, a little bird found
on the Northwest coast, which hopped around in the gravel, paying little
attention to me even when I walked up close to it to take pictures. I
finally called it quits and left, to find out the water tower was right
around the corner. It was actually a good place to take pictures, being
right next to the end of the runway -- or would have been good, if there had
been any interesting activity.

Okay, that was disappointing; planespotting increasingly feels like
diminished returns to me. I made my way to Tacoma and the Point Defiance Zoo
to see if I could do better. Indeed, even as I walked up to the zoo gate,
things seemed much more promising, since there was a peacock engaging in a
full display. I've often seen peacocks at zoos -- they make a loud, pealing
cry that can be a bit unsettling if one doesn't know where it's coming from
-- but never saw one put on a show like this. I took shot after shot, with
the peacock indeed putting on a show, doing slow 360-degree turns like a
model in front of an audience: Look at me! Look at me!

Having got plenty of shots, I then went into the zoo -- to then think that
the peacock was displaying, even though there were no peahens around.
Apparently having a human audience was good enough. I quickly canvassed the
zoo -- getting photos of a tiger, walrus, arctic fox, wolves, and in
particular sea otters -- and left, finding the peacock still exhibiting
himself to visitors.

I hit the road again, got a snack at a Denney's to fuel up, and then went to
the Seattle Museum of Flight. It was another quick trip, the main rationale
being to test my Panasonic Lumix camera for indoor shots of aircraft in poor
lighting conditions, in preparation for my 2016 trip back East. A later
inspection showed I got very good results from the camera's low-light mode.

And so ended my whirlwind trip to the coast. I drove north on Interstate 5,
traffic becoming congested towards central Seattle, but I didn't have too
much problem getting to the Interstate 90 turnoff, to then cruise east over
the mountains. On the far side of the mountains, I was rolling through the
flatlands of Central Washington, and thinking about the threatening freeze in
Loveland. I was supposed to get home at midday on Tuesday, but that would be
clearly too late; I finally decided that I would cut my stay in Spokane
short, leave on Sunday afternoon, stay in Missoula that night, and get back
to Loveland on Monday evening. It was supposed to be wintry in Loveland on
Sunday night / Monday morning as well, but not as frigid as the following
night, so I had a chance to rescue my sprinkler system. In any case, I
didn't want to spend an extra day worrying about it.

I was keeping myself amused by listening to the jazz tunes I had burned on a
CD-ROM. I had been a lot more into jazz when I was a youngster. I realized
with a bit of surprise that experimentation in jazz had largely come to a
halt in the early 1980s. Jazz musicians had been pushing the boundaries for
over thirty years to that time -- sometimes going off the deep end in doing
so -- but had run into diminishing returns, and in the end had to fall back
on tradition. To be sure, jazz has a very rich tradition to mine, but the
days of wild exploration are long gone. To the extent experimental jazz
survives, it is just another part of the tradition.

Leading from that, I realized that in my early sixties, I am now closing the
book on things in my life. I had been exploring jazz when I was a lad, one
of the books I was opening up in my life; now I was finishing them up. That
sounds like a forlorn notion, but it isn't; one accumulates a lot of
resources of various types over a lifetime, and refocusing on them turns out
to be rewarding. It also still leads to new discoveries -- but my age of
seeking out new worlds has passed.

I got to my brother Terry's house that evening, and talked about my worries
over getting back home quickly with my sister-in-law Janet -- who replied
that it would be easy to rearrange things on Sunday so I could get out in
time to make Missoula before too late. I got onto my tablet and changed
motel reservations, the experience proving painful. I finally realized what
had been gradually dawning on me since the trip to Arizona, that tablets are
fine for viewing videos or reading ebooks or using apps, but doing real work
on them is like assembling a ship in a bottle. I had obtained a BlueTooth
keyboard in hopes of easing the experience, but it didn't help much. I
needed to get something better suited to my purposes. [TO BE CONTINUED]

* THE COLD WAR (44): By the end of the Korean War, new leadership had
taken charge in both the East and the West. Following Stalin's death,
Lavrenti Beria -- the much-feared head of the state security service,
previously the "NKVD", then the "MGB", soon to become the "KGB" -- rose to
the top. Although Beria was notoriously brutal, his direction of foreign
intelligence gave him an excellent grasp of Western capabilities and intent;
he advocated liberalization of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, and better
relations with the West to obtain resources for development.

Other members of the Soviet leadership were favorably inclined to that idea,
but it wouldn't happen. In June, 1953, the East German government
implemented economic changes that were widely unpopular, leading to
demonstrations, which turned violent, and finally a general strike. The Red
Army intervened and restored order. Beria's enemies among the Soviet
leadership used the incident to move against him; he had made too many
enemies, and his fall was rapid. He was arrested in June and shot on 23
December 1953. A Red Army general pulled the trigger to end his sordid
career.

Leadership fell to a "troika" of three senior Party officials, including
Foreign Minister Molotov, Nikita Khrushchev, and Georgiy Malenkov. Khrushchev
was the most dynamic of the three, and within a few years would sideline the
other two members of the troika -- though they were spared the indignity of
arrest and execution. In any case, in the aftermath of Stalin's passing, the
most brutal features of his rule were quickly dismantled, with prisoners
released and arbitrary arrest becoming much less common. The USSR remained
an authoritarian security state, but the whimsical excesses were over. The
drive for security still meant that defense came first, with the Soviet Union
in particular driving for nuclear parity with the Americans, struggling to
keep up with Western technological advances. More guns meant less butter,
and Soviet citizens continued to lead a threadbare existence.

* Dwight Eisenhower had been elected to the US presidency in 1952 partly by
taking a tough line against Communism -- underlined by his secretary of
state, John Foster Dulles, an outspoken and single-minded hardliner, who
talked about "rolling back" the Reds. Eisenhower had also accepted Richard
Nixon, a hardcore anti-Communist, as his vice-presidential running mate.

Eisenhower, in reality, was flexible, being conservative in terms of domestic
policy, but an internationalist in terms of foreign affairs. He found the
extreme Right bizarre, recognizing the absurdity of Rightists who, falling
back on prewar isolationism, wanted to undercut US backing of NATO, while
simultaneously calling for the "liberation" of Eastern Europe. Eisenhower
boosted NATO, seeing it as a way that Europe would take more ownership of its
own defense, as well as provide support and forward bases for US forces;
money pumped into NATO was not a "giveaway", it enhanced American power.
As far the notion of "liberating" Eastern Europe went, when Dulles prepared a
speech calling for an effort to that end, Eisenhower told him to make it
clear that it would only be done by peaceful means.

Eisenhower had been reluctant to abandon the US alliance with the USSR, but
after the war he had concluded, writing in his diary, that "Russia is
definitely out to Communize the world." However, although Eisenhower had
attacked the Yalta agreements in his campaign speeches, he shrugged off calls
from the Right to repudiate them -- however poorly they had turned out,
simply scrapping them would gain nothing while causing endless trouble -- and
rejected the charge that FDR's agreement to them was treasonous, pointing it
was the best that could have been got under the circumstances. Indeed,
Eisenhower had implemented FDR's policies in occupied Germany and raised no
protest over them.

Eisenhower talked about normalizing relations between the US and the USSR.
He was dubious of the sincerity of Soviet calls for peaceful relations
following the change of leadership in the USSR, but they did prompt him to
respond. In an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in
Washington DC, on 16 April 1953, only weeks after the death of Stalin,
Eisenhower denounced the arms race:

BEGIN QUOTE:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children. ... This is not a way of life at all,
in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity
hanging from a cross of iron.

END QUOTE

In terms of concrete proposals, Eisenhower challenged the Kremlin to permit a
free and unified Germany, and liberate the countries of Eastern Europe under
Soviet domination. He envisioned a new order, in which the USA and USSR
would conclude an arms limitation agreement, leading to a ban on atomic
weapons, supervised by the United Nations.

The "Chance for Peace" speech, as it became known, went nowhere. Eisenhower
knew that Moscow wasn't going to budge on Eastern Europe, and was not going
to accept international inspection to verify a nuclear weapons ban. At best,
Eisenhower was just trying to set an agenda for what should happen over the
long run; in practice, the speech amounted to propaganda. He was determined
to scale back defense spending, which had skyrocketed during the Korean War,
but his focus was on cutting conventional forces -- and then only to a
degree, conventional weapons development proceeding at a near-war pace during
the 1950s. [TO BE CONTINUED]

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: In solar power news, an Idaho couple has a notion
that brings up the question: brilliant or nuts? Their big idea is to
produce solar panels that are, in effect, paving stones, and carpet roads
with them.

Scott & Julie Brusaw originally went public with the concept in 2010, though
their latest effort has a number of refinements -- most significantly,
hexagonal instead of square panels, the hexagonal configuration providing
better coverage for areas with curved edges. They're also heated to get rid
of snow and ice, and include LED indicators to generate road markings, or
even display messages.

The Brusaws claim their panels are impact-resistant, and that a panel can
handle a 113 tonne (125 ton) load. They've installed the panels in a parking
lot next to their lab. Overall life-cycle costs have yet to be determined,
but the Brusaws believe that a road solar installation will easily pay for
itself during its lifetime. Small solar parking lots or crosswalks could
power signs or street lamps; an entire town with streets made of solar panels
would have a decentralized electric grid, providing electricity to homes and
businesses.

* The multiple CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION TV series did much to glorify
forensic investigation, with police investigators tracking down the Black
Hats with whizzy technology. In reality, forensic science isn't quite that
whizzy, and it also doesn't always work as advertised. As discussed by an
article from THE ECONOMIST ("The Two Towers", 6 September 2014), as a case in
point, consider the notion of pinpointing a suspect's whereabouts at the time
of a crime using a call the suspect made on a cellphone.

Lisa Roberts was convicted of a 2002 murder in Portland, Oregon, park of a
prostitute, her ex-lover. Roberts faced 25 years in prison; on being told
that a cellphone call she had made pinpointed her location in the park at
the time of the killing, she pleaded guilty to get a 15 year sentence. In
reality, unless special measures are taken to use three cellphone towers to
get a location, a cellphone call cannot nail down a caller's location with
any accuracy. Roberts was released after almost 12 years in lockup.

According to officials of Cherry Biometrics, a Virginia forensics firm that
testifies in cases where cellphone data is used as evidence, prosecutors will
often claim that a cellphone will inevitably connect to the nearest tower --
but two calls from the same location may be picked up by different towers,
maybe one close by, maybe one distant. The propagation of radio waves
through the atmosphere can be very hard to predict; in addition, radio
signals may be blocked by buildings or other instructions, as well as
"bounced" by them in different directions.

Cellphone data can be used to establish that a caller is in a particular city
and not another one some distance away, but that's about it. Roberts was
jailed because her legal counsel, now deceased, failed to challenge the
cellphone data -- which could have been done, since a second call Roberts
made at the time of the killing placed her farther away, in a location where
she had been seen by witnesses.

* However, as reported by an article from BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK ("Cops Use
Military Gear To Track Cell Phones" by Peter Robison, 20 October 2014), it
does appear the police have the ability to nail down locations of cellphones
-- but aren't saying much about it. In early 2014, an activist named Freddy
Martinez was at a protest at Chicago's Daley Plaza when he notice the plates
of an unmarked cop car parked nearby. On checking his smartphone, Martinez
found there was a new cellular transmitter nearby, and wondered if the
copy car was the source.

Martinez filed a request under freedom of information laws to find out if the
Chicago police had special cellphone surveillance gear. He got back an
invoice for military-type gear that can spot and track cellphone activity.
The police refused to say more, citing exemptions under the Homeland Security
Act and Arms Control Export Act.

Police departments have been able to afford fancy surveillance gear due to
grants of tens of billions of dollars over the last decade from the US
Department of Homeland Security, as well Federal drug enforcement programs.
The police do not need a warrant to locate and track calls, though they do
need one to listen in on them.

Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Florida, has been doing a good business,
selling a suitcase-size phone tracking system named "StingRay". According to
the documents obtained by Martinez, the Chicago police spent at least
$150,000 USD on StingRay gear. At least 44 police forces in 18 US states
have cellphone-tracking gear; it exists in a legal gray area, with some civic
officials saying they don't see a problem with it, but a court in Florida
throwing out a conviction based on unwarranted cellphone tracking. Police
forces using such technologies unsurprisingly tend to be secretive about it.
Harris refuses to discuss it at all, one company official saying: "We refer
everything back to the law enforcement agencies that are reportedly using
them."

* DARPA DOES BRAIN CHIPS: As discussed by a note from IEEE SPECTRUM,
nobody ever accused the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
the Pentagon's "mad science" arm, of lacking ambition. The agency is now
embarking on a "Restoring Active Memory (RAM)" program to develop and test
prosthetic memory devices that can be implanted in the human brain. The plan
is that the implants will be able to help veterans with traumatic brain
injuries, and other people whose natural memory function is impaired.

Two DARPA-funded research teams, led by researchers Itzhak Fried at UCLA and
Mike Kahana at the University of Pennsylvania, will focus on essential basic
science -- looking for neural signals associated with the formation and
recall of memories; working on computational models to describe how neurons
carry out such processes; and figuring out how an artificial device can
replicate them. They'll also collaborate with partners to develop practical
hardware capable of recording the electrical activity of neurons, processing
the information, and then stimulating other neurons as needed.

The underlying basis for the RAM program is the theory that the brain is a
collection of circuits, a memory being formed by the sequential actions of
many neurons. If a person has a brain injury that knocks out some of those
neurons, the whole circuit may malfunction, and the person will experience
memory problems. If electrodes can pick up the signal in the neurons
upstream from the problem spot, and then convey that signal around the damage
to intact neurons downstream, then the memory should function as normal.

Initial human experiments will be conducted with hospitalized epilepsy
patients who have had electrodes implanted in their brains as they await
surgery -- this being done so their doctors can pinpoint the origin of their
seizures. Since epilepsy patients often experience memory loss as well,
they're a good fit for the research, being often recruited for studies.
Eventually trials would include military servicemembers suffering from
traumatic brain injuries, and finally civilians with similar injuries.

Some researchers are skeptical that the work will accomplish much. According
to Roger Redondo, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the viability of the DARPA effort will depend greatly on what
kind of memory loss people with traumatic brain injury actually have. Memory
loss can result from problems with either storage or retrieval; in the case
of a storage problem, the connections that form a memory were either never
formed to begin with, or were destroyed. In such cases, "no implantable
device is going to help."

He added that if a traumatic injury produces a retrieval problem, in which
most of a memory is there but simply hard to access, stimulation could
potentially be useful. The trouble is that it will be extremely difficult to
determine which cells contain the memory and precisely tune electrical
stimulation to drive its retrieval: "The complexity of the brain, and the
hippocampus, is such that any change in voltage that a micro-electrode or chip
can apply, even in a tiny area, will affect multitudes of neurons in
uncontrolled ways."

Redondo is not, however, opposed to the exercise, seeing as the kind of
"blue-sky, high-risk" project that DARPA is uniquely chartered to take on.
As DARPA officials point out, given the 270,000 veterans of the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars who have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, nothing
less than a major scientific leap is required, the options for injured
service members now being "very few."

* FROM THE SKIES TO THE DEPTHS: As discussed by an article from AAAS
SCIENCE Online ("Satellites Reveal Hidden Features At The Bottom Of Earth's
Seas" by Carolyn Gramling, 2 October 2014), only about 10% of the landscape
at the bottoms of the Earth's oceans has been mapped in any detail; we know
more about the surface of Mars. Sonar soundings from research vessels simply
don't have enough coverage to provide wide-area maps.

Now, using precision observations of the Earth's gravitational field obtained
by satellites, researchers have been able to greatly improve their maps of
the seafloor. They have been able to spot previously unknown features --
including thousands of extinct volcanoes more than a kilometer in height --
as well as obtain insights into lingering uncertainties in the Earth's
history.

The satellites measured variations in the Earth's gravity indirectly, using
precision radar altimeters -- radars that can provide highly accurate
distances, allowing the variations in the height of the seas to be picked
out. When corrected for wave heights and tides, the radar probes of the
ocean surface build up a picture of its overall topography, its bumps and
valleys, which reflect the features of the ocean bottom below. According to
David Sandwell, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in
San Diego: "A seamount, for example, exerts a gravitational pull, and warps
the sea surface outward. So we can map the bottom of the ocean indirectly,
using sea-surface topography."

Four satellites have generated high-resolution radar altimeter data sets
available to scientists:

The US Navy's aging Geosat and Geosat Follow-On missions, launched in
1985 and 1998 respectively.

Jason-1, a joint mission between NASA and CNES, the French space agency,
this spacecraft having been launched in 1991.

CryoSat-2, the youngest of the set, an ESA satellite launched in 2010 to
monitor the polar ice caps.

Until recently, seafloor gravity maps relied on declassified data from the
Geosat missions and on ERS-1 data, but their instruments were unable to
resolve some features of tectonic plate boundaries, particularly if they were
covered by sediment layers. According to Sandwell: "We could see ridges and
transform [faults] that weren't buried by sediment" -- but anything buried
under sediments was usually blurry.

Better data from Jason-1 and CryoSat-2 are sharpening the focus. Sandwell
claims the difference is like that between ordinary and high-definition
television. CryoSat-2 has been a particular star, not merely because of the
high accuracy of its radar altimetry system, but because it has amassed data
for four years; the other missions only collected data for a couple of years
each.

Using that data, as well as significantly improved analysis techniques,
Sandwell and his colleagues built a new marine gravity model that is at least
twice as accurate as earlier models. They've been able to identify thousands
of previously unknown seamounts from one to two kilometers tall dotting the
ocean floor, as well as extinct ridges that once contributed to seafloor
spreading and plate tectonics, but which are no longer active.

Oil companies -- and, Sandwell adds, the Chinese government, which is
exploring the South China Sea -- are very interested in the new gravity maps.
Oil and gas exploration focuses along continental margins where the sea floor
is relatively flat under thick layers of accumulated sediment, and the new
gravity maps make it possible to spot sediment basins that are possible
reservoirs. Sandwell believes there's plenty in the new seafloor data to
keep the marine science community busy, saying: "It's a lot of new
information, and it's all very detailed."

* In related news, as reported by an article from BBC WORLD NEWS Online
("Greenland Ice Loss Doubles From Late 2000s" by Jonathan Amos, 20 August
2014), the ESA's Cryosat-2 spacecraft has been monitoring the depletion of
Earth's ice sheets with its precision radar altimetry system. Cryosat-2 has
determined that the Greenland ice sheet is losing about 375 cubic kilometers
of ice a year, plus or minus about 24 cubic kilometers a year.

Along with the discharges from Antarctica, running to about 128 cubic
kilometers a year, it means Earth's two big ice sheets are now dumping
roughly 500 cubic kilometers of ice in the oceans annually. Angelika Humbert
from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) comments: "The contribution of
both ice sheets together to sea level rise has doubled since 2009. To us,
that's an incredible number."

The AWI group, led by senior researcher Veit Helm, has crunched about two
years' worth of data centered on 2012:2013 to construct what are called
"digital elevation models (DEMs)". These models are derived from a total of
14 million individual height measurements for Greenland, and another 200
million for Antarctica. The Cryosat-2 models take off from similar datasets
created by the US space agency's IceSat mission between 2003 and 2009,
permitting analysis of ice sheet changes over a decade's time.

The data does show local increases in ice pack in Antarctica, but they are
overwhelmed by ice losses. A British-led group recently reported its own
Antarctica DEM, using a different algorithm to process the numbers in the
CryoSat-2 data, and came to similar results as the AWI team. Preliminary
analysis of data from the US GRACE satellite -- which uses direct gravity
mapping, not radar altimetry, to map ice pack -- suggests GRACE data is in
accord with CryoSat-2 data. In its paper, the AWI team did not calculate the
sea level rise for that volume of melting; but if the volume is considered to
be all ice, the rise is likely to be a bit over a millimeter a year.

* ANOTHER MONTH: US national elections are imminent; they come around
every two years, this current round being the "mid-terms" between
presidential elections. There's a notably high-profile fight in Colorado
between the Republicans and the Democrats over a Senate seat, the Republican
contender being a Representative, the Democrat being the Senate incumbent.
On examining the voting record of both, to me it was a question of counting
bricks: for the Republican, it was easier to count the bricks present, for
the Democrat, easier to count the bricks missing. I'll take the missing
bricks any day. Voter turnout tends to be low for mid-terms, but the
Colorado race has been heated enough to make it likely more people will
exercise their privilege.

Still, I found the contest tiresome. I got an early ballot in the mail,
promptly filled it out, and went downtown to deposit it. That way, I could
put the matter out of my mind, even though the election still has a few days
to go. I'm sure that I'm still getting dunned on the telephone -- but no
worries, I finally got so sick of telephone spam that I turned off the ringer
and always let calls go to voicemail. I don't like the phone, I prefer email
any day since I have more control over it. I don't know why I didn't turn
the phone off a long time ago; I get very few legit calls, and it's so much
more peaceful with the ringer off. It's been bugging me for years, now the
problem's solved. I occasionally see the phone light up with an incoming
call, but messages are rarely left.

As is something of a truism, state / local ballot measures seemed more
interesting than candidates. A state amendment was floated to define the
unborn as human beings; this is the third time it's been pushed on the
Colorado ballot in six years, I don't think it will fly better this time
around. Along with its evident unpopularity, the amendment struck me as
politically ridiculous, an absurd way to attempt to establish a fundamental
legal principle -- and even if it were to pass (fat chance), I have little
doubt that the amendment's constitutionality would challenged, directly or
indirectly. I'm also not keen on the fact that Colorado allows public
referendums on amendments to the state constitution.

More appropriately, there was a state referendum to demand special labeling
of GM foods. Taking no stock in anti-GM hysteria, I knew unambiguously where
I stood with that proposition, but it appears public sentiment is for it.
One local poll was for a new animal shelter; sounds good to me, and I was
happy to have something to vote on that didn't feel like a battle, and
in which sensibility was likely to prevail.

It is an open question which way the entire election is going to go.
President Obama is not doing well in popularity polls, primarily because of
the sluggish economy, but then Congress seems to be rated even lower: a
falling tide strands all boats. Respect for politics and politicians seems
to be falling on a generational basis, which is strange, since it's hard to
say they're any better or worse than they ever were. Indeed, given the
introduction of transparency laws, a case might be made they're better. In
any case, I'm certainly glad I have the vote, I wouldn't let anyone take it
from me -- but I won't lose any sleep no matter how the election comes out,
and I'll be happy when it's over.

* Every month I skim through four monthly blog archives -- to an extent to
make sure there aren't gross errors in them; a bit more to make minor changes
as dictated by later experience; but mostly just to refresh my memory on what
I've written. Once I get up to current blog postings, I start the cycle over
from the beginning in late 2005. It's worthwhile to remember relevant old
articles that I can link back to from new ones, and also I can get insights
from the old articles. For example, I was reading archives from early 2006,
and found I had written about newfangled flash memory sticks. The startling
thing was that, at that time, a 2 GB flash stick cost over a hundred bucks!

Another interesting revelation is that LED light bulbs, having been emerging
for the better part of a decade, have finally come down in price enough to
make them worth the investment, maybe about ten bucks for a 60-watt
equivalent. I've bought a few for high duty cycle lights around the house,
the rest I'm leaving with the fluorescents until they wear out. Somewhat
oddly, the smaller bulbs, for candelabra sockets, are more expensive than the
bigger bulbs, but that's obviously due to lower sales volumes.

I did quickly notice that, when I turn on the lights in the morning, instead
of the gradual flickering up of the fluorescents, the LED bulbs are "instant
on", meaning I put my head under the covers so I don't get a blast of light
in my dark-adapted eyes. Of course, being a new technology, how long they
will really last is an open question, but I am amused at the idea of taking
the LED lamps with me if I move to another residence.

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